One wonders on these last fundraising days of the year, when e-mail inboxes are clogged with unusually large numbers of solicitations, just how much the little guy counts, when parties and candidates can score so much bigger from a handful of key players.

The Free Press reports that elections are dropping January 28 in Arthur-Virden and Morris, both vacant seats previously held by Progressive Conservatives. Barring upsets, the races will be truer tests of the PC riding associations than of the candidates themselves;

Looks like the proliferation of wildcat pipelining hasn’t put much of a dent in the huge burn-off taking place in the west. The year ending in November 2013 saw 2.9 million tons of (counted) gas flared – a tragic waste of energy and resources.

A new water treatment plant is needed in Grand Forks, in part to deal with the increased levels of pollutants in the Red River since the opening of the Devil’s Lake outlet. If North Dakota had properly treated the outlet water at the source, downstream taxpayers wouldn’t be footing the bill now. And our state would probably have been spared a lawsuit or two.

Grand Forks got a little more Canadian today, with Tim Horton’s opening up on 42nd Street directly across from the Canad Inns. Now Forxites can buy coffee and donuts 24 hours a day without having to drive up to Winkler!

I stopped by for a quick double-double and a cruller earlier, and captured the oeuvre of opening day: A long line-up, but a positive mood in the crowd! Minor glitches cropped up under the heavy demand. Canadian bankcards, which rely on the chip-and-PIN Interac Direct Payment system, aren’t yet being accepted properly.

We had a bit of weather over the week, nothing too terrible, but it was enough to keep high school debate teams off the highways. For a little bit there, Snow Day fever threatened to take over, but ultimately it was mostly business as usual.

There was one big, puzzling exception: UND shut down at 6pm on Wednesday night. I’m really not sure what the University hoped to accomplish by closing after business hours and after the entire blizzard had already happened, aside from testing the announcements API on its website.